


Breaking Orbit

by jessebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Because of Reasons, First Kiss, Kiss Meme Request, M/M, Obi-Wan is WTF, Qui-Gon Lives, Qui-Gon makes a hard left turn, Separations, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 18:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13664679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: “You're going towhat?"





	Breaking Orbit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PunsBulletsAndPointyThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunsBulletsAndPointyThings/gifts).



 

 

 

He couldn't think. For a long, long moment he couldn't even breathe. “You're going to _what?"_

“Take Anakin out of the Temple. He – ” Qui-Gon's serenity was holding. Strained but holding. “The Temple… This is not the correct place for him.” Qui-Gon's shoulders were set beneath rumpled beige tunics, his back straight as he stood in front of the window in Obi-Wan's quarters, his face to Coruscant's eternal traffic. “I was wrong, Obi-Wan. He should not be a part of this Order.”

The floor cracked beneath Obi-Wan's feet.

“You're saying – ” Obi-Wan gulped, breathed,and released his utter shock into the Force. Or enough that he could think again, anyway. “You're saying that after all this – after three years of battles with the Council to keep him here and you nearly dying to get him here in the first place – that you were wrong.” _After pushing you and I to the breaking point –_ “That Anakin is not meant to be a Jedi.”

“Oh, he is meant to be a Jedi, that is no mistake. But not here.”

“ … here.”

Finally, Qui-Gon turned. “I'm not taking him out of the Jedi, just out of this Order. I'm taking him to Master Altis,” he said, as calmly as if he hadn't just announced his plans to shatter Obi-Wan's world.

All the air had gone out of the room. “Djinn Altis. The break-away.” _The renegade._ Hundred little gods of space, he needed to sit down. Now.

Obi-Wan yanked a chair to him with the Force and sank into it with little grace, and stared at the man who'd been his teacher. “You're going to take your padawan out to _Force only knows where,_ to be trained by the heretic.”

“We are not a religion, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon said with a touch of asperity, “the term 'heresy' doesn't apply. Altis believes – ”

“I _know_ what Altis believes!” Obi-Wan snapped, something hot and dangerous firing under his skin. “He thinks a master can somehow handle more than one student at a time! He thinks _adults_ can be trained! He believes _attachments_ are _good_ , Qui-Gon – _if that's not heresy then w_ _hat else would you call_ _it_ _?!”_

“Perhaps _sanity_?!” Qui-Gon snapped back, before he caught himself and breathed, his anger released in a heartbeat.

“Sanity.” This just got better and better. Obi-Wan's childhood bad habit of grinding the heels of his hands against his eyes, long since rooted out, was making a viciously successful comeback. “Oh, Force.”

The low sounds of boots across the floor, Qui-Gon's Force-Presence settling in front on him. “Obi-Wan.” Familiar voice. Beloved voice. Soft, even; familiar tones that asked for his attention.

His own anger released to the Force, what Obi-Wan had left was exhaustion.  He let his hands fall into his lap and blinked at Qui-Gon, now crouched in front of him. Looked at the craggy, familiar face as though he'd never seen it before. 

“What are you doing, Master? What is this?” _P_ _lease tell me something, anything, that makes sense,_ _some kind, any kind of sense, please don't destroy –_ “This flies in the face of the Code, of everything we're for, everything you ever taught me.”

“Does it?”

Oooh, no. “Don't,” Obi-Wan said tartly. “We're not playing that game now, Qui-Gon. Answers, please.”

A hint of a smile beneath the mustache. “Obi-Wan. Think. We were taught, you and I and every crècheling, about the dangers of attachment. How to serve the Force was our highest and only goal. We should love nothing but that, have nothing more than that; nothing close to us that we might serve, through love or fear, above the Force. Why? Because we are powerful, and dangerous with it. Divide loyalty with attachments and there is no peace – there is havoc and destruction. So we are raised and taught not to love but in the abstract, and so we believe, and it has apparently worked in the Order for a thousand years.”

Obi-Wan swallowed again, catching on specific words and phrasing. “'In.' 'We believe.' Master, a thousand years would seem to imply some level of success.”

The skin around Qui-Gon's eyes crinkled. “It would.”

“Then why…?”

“Why do I question it now? Because I've come to realize what it is that has felt wrong to me for many years. That in a way, a quite fundamental way, our rejection of attachments is a lie.”

“ _A lie –!”_

“Sssh, no, wait.” Qui-Gon gripped Obi-Wan's knees and squeezed, gently. “Wait. It's a lie, Padawan, because _we are attached_ , all of us. To _here_. To _this_. To the Order and what it has, all it holds. It is parent and sibling and teacher, with the Code as law and lifeblood. And it has worked because we are not truly giving up attachment, merely trading one form for another.”

Qui-Gon's conviction was a solid pillar in the Force. All Obi-Wan could do was stare at him.

“We keep our emotional security, our connections, the things we tell ourselves we do not keep, right here. Here, with the only family most have ever known. And no matter where the Force guides us, we retain that – we _know_ that our family is here. And that it will be here no matter what happens to us as individual Jedi.”

The big hands on his knees squeezed again. “ _This_ is our attachment, Obi-Wan. Our bedrock. And _this_ is what Anakin does _not_ have.”

Yes, staring was still all Obi-Wan could do.

“This is why he is different and why he is not thriving here. He had – has – family, foundation, support from which I – deafened by the Force and my own blindness – took him away and gave him nothing to replace it with.”

Obi-Wan blinked. Which was progress, he supposed, but his stomach was twisting in a most peculiar way. “But – he has the Order now too, he… ”

But Qui-Gon was shaking his head. “The Order – does not support him,” Qui-Gon said softly, “not truly. And you know this; I believe that you feel it as I do.”

And the Sith-hell of it was, Obi-Wan did feel it. Had become aware of it every time he was back in the Temple, and how it had shifted. Grown.

The – “holding away,” sensation, subtle and yet not, when Anakin's name was mentioned. How rarely the boy was spoken of in terms of the great leaps and strides he'd made and the things he knew, but rather in the things he did not yet know – as though it was Anakin's “fault” for not becoming instantly a proper Jedi child and crèche-raised padawan. As though his ease and blaze and instinctive confidence in the Force were unbecoming because it was not the Order which had fostered them.

Distrusted. Feared, almost.

The way Anakin was “disapproved of” in correct, properly serene Jedi fashion.

Oh, Obi-Wan knew that feeling, from the inside out.

Most peculiar was rapidly becoming utterly horrible.

“I must,” Qui-Gon said, “I _must_ , find the way to give him that support before it's too late. I cannot do it – alone, and I cannot do it here, where his needs contradict the very tenets we teach.”

Obi-Wan was back to staring, now with the interesting addition of a sick, sour stomach. “And you think – Djinn Altis can. You would take your padawan and give him up. After – ”

_After you gave me up for him._

“Not give him up, no. We would both learn there, Anakin and I. I don't know – when I would return.” And there was something there, something seeking, something pleading in the depthless indigo of Qui-Gon's eyes and Obi-Wan just couldn't look at it anymore.

He knew his master when he got like this. He _knew_. He'd seen it before, after all, time and again: the only words that hadn't yet been uttered were “It's the will of the Force.”

“Why are you telling me this, Qui-Gon?” he whispered, his own eyes closed, the words falling like stones in the space of his tiny common room. “You would have been better – to just leave.”

A small sound, a tiny shift of air like a reach, ruthlessly stifled. “Because… “

Silence. In words and in the Force.

And that brought Obi-Wan's eyes back open, because Qui-Gon Jinn was never at a loss for words.

His old master was looking through him, deep-water eyes fixed to some point on Obi-Wan's right shoulder, and unease tickled through Obi-Wan's mind and Force-sense because Qui-Gon looked…

“Because I had a hope,” Qui-Gon said at last, slow and worn, “a foolish one perhaps, I see, that I – might not need to do this alone.”

“Alone?”

“I wanted… ” Resolution, firming in the Force, and Qui-Gon's gaze rose to his. “I want you to come with me.”

Obi-Wan would be willing to swear later on, on those most revered Jedi texts frozen forever at the top of the Spire, that his heart – disobedient organ, irrepressible, eternally hopeful past any reasoning and all sanity – actually skipped a few beats before his training clamped down and wrestled it back into line. “… _with_ you?”

This was unreal. Even for Obi-Wan's “maverick Master,” this was far out and beyond Wild Space. That Qui-Gon would ask him to – “You want me to leave the Order, and come with you, to help you train your Chosen One as a heretic.”

“No.” Qui-Gon's mouth tightened, but he didn't protest the term again. “Not to train Anakin. I have been and always will be grateful for the help you've given me with him. Your support, your knowledge – your unfailing kindnesses with him – have been beyond price, and still more-so in the light of the needless pain I inflicted on you at the start.”

Obi-Wan took a careful breath, his heart giving another warning thump. They had worked that through long ago, he and Qui-Gon. He knew Qui-Gon's regrets, but rarely had his old master stated them so plainly. “I have done only what is right, Qui-Gon. Anakin is blameless in all that; I've welcomed him as any Jedi would do.”

Qui-Gon's mouth pulled up in his familiar, wry half-smile. “Were _that_ true, Obi-Wan, we'd not be having this conversation at all,” he said, humor rumbling in his voice and warming in the Force and hundred little gods, would it be the last time Obi-Wan would feel this?  Feel him?

Because Qui-Gon was utterly set on this course, that was plain – and in his reasons ran a thread of truth that Obi-Wan couldn't deny. That felt _**true**_ , as much as all his training wanted to recoil from it.

And Qui-Gon – wanted Obi-Wan with him, on this course, in this madness. To leave the Order and take up with the break-away Jedi Master who had himself left because he believed that no one should be denied Force-training because of age. Who believed that attachment was not always, automatically to be denied – that it was possible – that it could be _**good**_ – for a Jedi to love. Not just as in the Force and compassion for all, but love in specific: for a parent, or a child or a family. A dear one.

For a desired one. For a –

For a lover.

“Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan blinked and found Qui-Gon closer, up on his knees and warm body pressing against Obi-Wan's, concern on his face and those powerful, gentle hands gripping Obi-Wan's forearms. Enormous hands, really – capable hands, whether wielding a lightsabre or a delicate teacup, or pressing tiny seeds into the gossamer-fine soil-medium he used to add yet another plant to the jungle of his quarters.

His teacher's hands, now the hands of his _/wish_ _ed_ _to be, oh!/_ closest friend. His –

Obi-Wan stared into blue eyes. Serene, so loving: the same things that had been there for literally years whenever Qui-Gon had looked at him. “Why?”

It was Qui-Gon's turn to blink. Well, he was past-due.

Something was lightening, cautiously, in Obi-Wan's chest, fueled by that stubborn, ever-resurrecting hope. “Why me? There _are_ other rebels in this Temple and they're better suited to this; why are you asking me to come with you?”

“I have told you – ”

“You have not,” Obi-Wan cut him off, and Qui-Gon stilled. “You've told me why you're going, and you've told me that your reason for asking me is _not_ because of Anakin. And if that's not the reason, then what is? Why _me_ , Qui-Gon?”

Qui-Gon's lips parted and closed again and something clicked deep in his throat, and this was surely some sort of record: twice speechless now, a man who was never, never at a loss for words. And in the Force…

The Force felt – tense. Anticipating. A kind of nervous trepidation Obi-Wan had in no way ever associated with this man. And beneath that, long obscured but growing stronger, something old and cherished but never sprouted was blooming now into a new growth, pushing up from beneath the snow.

Obi-Wan turned his hands and cupped his former master's elbows, and leaned a little nearer. His fingers were trembling, he realized. He didn't care. The air he breathed was full of Qui-Gon, and he pulled it in deep and held it. “Why me?”

This close, Qui-Gon's eyes were like flame, so intensely blue they burned. Then they were too close, and the world blurred and went up in fire as Qui-Gon kissed him.

They were on the floor, kneeling together, locked tight body to body and Obi-Wan had no clue when that had happened and cared far, far less. The only reality was Qui-Gon Jinn, in his arms, kissing him. Drowning him in joy and love and lust in the Force and kissing him as if he, Obi-Wan Kenobi, were the most precious and desirable thing in the galaxy.

It felt like years, but the sun was little lower in the window when Qui-Gon pulled back. Not far; only enough to cup Obi-Wan's face with those wonderful hands and lean their foreheads together, his breath warm and real across Obi-Wan's skin. “That's why,” Qui-Gon murmured; roughly, like something had been broken and was being remade. “That's why.”

Obi-Wan's smile felt like it would split his face. “You've always had a way with words, my Master.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Another one for the tumblr kiss meme! **18\. I don't have the words right now so here's a kiss**  
>  (requested by punsbulletsandpointythings)
> 
> Uhm, this isn't the fluffy kissing fic you were looking for...


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